The throughput of communications between computing devices continues to increase as modern networking hardware enables physically separate computing devices to communicate with one another orders of magnitude faster than was previously possible. Furthermore, high-speed network communication capabilities are being made available to a greater number of people, both in the locations where people work, and in their homes. As a result, an increasing amount of data and services can be meaningfully provided to an increasing audience via such network communications. In particular, it has become more practical to perform digital data processing at a location remote from the location where such data is initially generated, and where the processed data will be consumed. For example, a user can upload a digital photograph to a server and then cause the server to process the digital photograph, changing its colors and applying other visual edits to it. In such an example, the digital processing, such as of the photograph, is being performed by a device that is remote from the user. In another, more common, example, users utilize services and functionality that are conceptually simple, such as search services, but which, in fact, require vast amounts of processing capability.
To provide such data and processing capabilities, via network communications, from a centralized location, the centralized location typically comprises hundreds or thousands of computing devices, typically mounted in vertically oriented racks. Such a collection of computing devices, as well as the associated hardware necessary to support such computing devices, and the physical structure that houses the computing devices and associated hardware, is traditionally referred to as a “data center”. With the increasing availability of high-speed network communication capabilities, and thus the increasing provision of data and services from centralized locations, as well as the traditional utilization of data centers, such as the provision of advanced computing services and massive amounts of computing processing capability, the size and quantity of data centers continues to increase.
Typically, the computing devices that perform the vast majority of the processing performed by a data center are commonly referred to as “blade server computing devices”. To reduce cost and complexity such blade server computing devices typically comprise processing hardware, such as the central processing units and associated support processing units, but typically do not comprise infrastructure hardware, such as fans, power supplies, and the like. Instead, blade server computing devices are typically designed and constructed to plug into a larger physical device that is commonly referred to as a “server chassis”. Such a server chassis typically provides physical receptacles into which blade server computing devices can be physically inserted and, thus, communicationally coupled to the infrastructure provided by the server chassis. Typically, a server chassis can accept several blade server computing devices, and can also comprise a power supply and fans, as well as a backplane logic board, or other like device, into which the blade server computing devices can physically and communicationally couple. Such a server chassis is then, typically, further mounted onto a physical rack that is typically oriented vertically in order to provide for multiple vertical layers of computing devices, such as the server chassis. The physical rack provides the physical stability and support in order to accommodate multiple vertical layers of computing devices and, thereby, enable data center operators to most efficiently utilize all three dimensions of space within a data center.